I have two systems, one is my laptop and the other the server/media pc. My laptop uses the pulseaudio server of the server, this went surprisingly easy, synchronizing cookies (~/.config/pulse/cookie), enabling theload-module module-native-protocol-tcp in /etc/pulse.default.pa and setting default-server = susa in /etc/pulse/client.conf was all that was needed. Now I can control all pulseaudio stuff from my laptop and not from the server. I haven’t figured out how to let pulseaudio switch to the local sound card if I’m not at home and my server is not reachable. I’ve set default-server = susa localhost in the hopes of directing pulseaudio back to the laptop sound card if the server is not available but I haven’t tested this.
This is because I can’t control pulseaudio. On my server I get this:
johan@susa:~> pacmd
No PulseAudio daemon running, or not running as session daemon.
johan@susa:~> pulseaudio -k
E: [pulseaudio] main.c: Failed to kill daemon: No such process
johan@susa:~> pulseaudio --kill
E: [pulseaudio] main.c: Failed to kill daemon: No such process
johan@susa:~> pulseaudio --start
E: [pulseaudio] main.c: Daemon startup failed.
johan@susa:~> pulseaudio --check
johan@susa:~> ps -A|grep pulse
3797 ? 01:15:42 pulseaudio
Since this is my server I don’t want to reboot everytime I change config files which I’ll probably have to to. Doesn anyone know how pulseaudio is organized in opensuse?
The server has the 5.1 speakerset connected via an USB audio card. I set this card as the main sound card is yast but sound was still coming out of the internal sound card. Setting the device preference in the phonon multimedia framework fixed this but I’m not sure if this work in all cases. It took me a huge search before I found the settings were located here, the whole of the internet let’s you dive into udev rules for setting default sound cards and other config files where configure desktop -> multimetdia -> audio and video settings already had what I needed.
In the audio hardwarde setup I can select different profiles. The stereo profile gives 2 channel output and works as expected. The 5.1 setting gives audio over all channels but here comes my problem: I want to control the upmixing from stereo to 5.1 and set the volume for individual channels. The default upmixing uses the center speaker but has no output on the subwoofer channel. The volume control of the individual channels in pavucontrol doesn’t seem to work unless I change all channels equally in volume. Googling only gives me how to do it using alsa, not what I need.
So, the main question now is: how is individual channel volume and upmixing controlled and how can I change it?